


In Healing Healed

by icarus_chained



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Families of Choice, Friendship/Love, Gen, Healers, Healing, Hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 06:44:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7498161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set just at the end of Ep.52. Pike considers Percy, Vox Machina, light and darkness, healing and being healed. In the end, family is family, and family is nearly reason enough to do anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Healing Healed

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still skipping around the timeline, and I'm behind everyone else, but I just watched "The Kill Box" and that little bit at the end where they resurrect the kid was _so lovely_ :
> 
>  **Taliesin/Percy:** I'm gonna sit and fix my gun.  
>  **Sam/Scanlan:** 'cause that's more important.  
>  **Taliesin/Percy:** I'm ... What am I gonna do, tinker him back to life?  
>  *proceeds to harmonise in Celestial with Pike to help draw a child's soul back into his body*

It was so easy to love them. It was _so_ easy. Every time she left them her heart broke, and every time she rejoined them it felt like being whole again. They were just ... if there was a word beyond 'family', a deeper and fiercer sort of thing, then that was what Vox Machina were to her. They were _hers_ , in a way nothing else in the whole world was hers. They were just ... a thing apart.

It was moments like this that really brought it home to her. These tiny, breathless moments in the wake of bigger things, these spaces where they tried so hard to put back together what had so very recently been broken. She'd fought for that feeling all her life, given her life to it in the service of her god, and it was in these little spaces that she remembered why all over again. Each and every time.

They sang a child back to life. Herself and Percy, with Keyleth a little to the side. He'd come over and sat fumbling and nervous beside her, and given his voice to hers to try and make something bigger than them both. To heal what had been broken, to bring back what had been lost. She'd watched him. Felt him, while he listened and learned and matched his voice to hers, while he fumbled around words in a language that he understood and wanted so very much to be worthy of. She'd watched him, with the light of Sarenrae in her chest, while under their hands a slain child climbed unsteadily back to life.

And it was ... it was more than just the child. It always was. That was the part that was so hard to explain. It reflected back. The healing. It washed back into the healer. It ... It put things back together, not just inside those who received it, but inside those who gave it too. She'd seen that, felt it. Percy ...

She'd heard him, before they started. Him and Scanlan. "What am I going to do, tinker him back to life?" It had been light, a quip and a riposte, but there'd been something so broken under it. There was such a darkness in Percy sometimes. Of all of them, he was the one who scared her the most. He'd been broken when he came to them, and it had taken them so long to notice it, and there were times now when he only seemed to fracture more and more the farther they went. She could see it happening, with the same weight in her stomach as when she'd noticed the cracks in her medallion. Every time he started to heal, something seemed to break him again. Himself, a lot of the time. It terrified her. She lived in fear of the day when those cracks finally became too large to be healed. 

She wanted to just ... to cup him in her hands, hold him together, hold him and shine on him and beg him to stay with them that little longer. She wanted to tell him, to _show_ him, that there was hope, there was always hope, there was no darkness in the world or inside of him that could ever be strong enough to keep him from them. She wanted to show him that. She despaired of ever being able to. And then ...

Then there were moments like this. Moments when he ... when he did it himself, when he came to her himself. When he put down his guns, put down that part of him, and tried to be something more. When he gave her his hands and his voice, and made himself part of the light. Because he wanted to. Because deep down in his heart, all he wanted was to be something and someone good. And he was. He _was_. Because he wanted it enough to do things like this, to speak words in the language of light and give his voice to bring a child back to life. He'd thrown a demon from his soul once, out of love and will and this thing of theirs that was so much more than family, and that was why, even if he scared her, she knew, she _believed_ that he wouldn't break. Not all the way. Not beyond all reach of the light. 

And this ... This was what healing was. This was what it did. And family, that too. This was why they were ... everything that mattered in the world. Because when you did this, when you gave, when you tried to heal, it came back into you. Sarenrae's gifts didn't just pour outwards. Like the sea, like the tides, they flowed out and they flowed back. When you healed someone else, it healed a part of you in turn. She'd seen it. She'd always known it, but in moments like this she _saw_ it. The glimmer of joy and relief in Percy's eyes, knowing that he'd managed to give something back, to heal instead of harm. The cracks in his soul that had, just for a moment, become a little smaller. This was the path she followed. This was why she followed it.

And, in so many ways, this was who she followed it _for_. These people. Her family.

They were so easy to love. All of them, even the ones most stained and wearied by darkness. Maybe especially those. Because it was ... It wasn't enough. All the darkness in the world, it wasn't enough. They held together anyway. They held out their hands, and fought their way through, and came together again no matter how deep the crack into which they'd fallen. He came to her. Percy. He put down his guns, their certainty and their comfort, and came to her to try something so much more terrifying, and so much more wonderful too. They'd fought a battle, fought it long and hard and fought it well, and then afterwards ... 

They had these little moments. They healed, not just each other, but themselves. They reached out and touched each other, held each other, and somehow managed to press closed the cracks in each other's souls. Maybe not enough, maybe not all the way, but ... but enough so that the darkness, this one more time, couldn't have them.

"You're more than just a gun, Percy," she whispered softly to herself. Watching him, wishing she knew how to say it so he'd listen. "You're more than just vengeance and tinkering and bad mistakes. We all are. We're so much more. I wish I knew how to show you."

But she couldn't. Not yet, anyway. Some wounds couldn't be healed with just a blessing, no matter how powerful it might be. Some cracks couldn't just be bathed in Sarenrae's light until they vanished. Dead children could be brought back to life, but a wounded soul would take that little bit longer to piece, slowly and carefully, back together again.

But then ... that was all right. She nodded quietly and decisively to herself. That was all right. For him, for them, she could take that time. 

For her family, Pike Trickfoot would make all the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Again, apologies for any mistakes from skipping around the timeline. Also, I deeply, _deeply_ adore Pike, but I'm not sure how well I manage to write her -_-;


End file.
